Friday, March 13, 2009

Jon Stewart Attacks Jim Cramer (and Markets)

Well, since most everyone relies on Memeorandum these days for the hot/buzz stories of the day, here's my obligatory* post on Jon Stewart's "takedown" yesterday of financial shock-jock Jim Cramer on the Daily Show.

By the looks of things, conservatives are afraid to touch this story, but James Pethokoukis has the best post on Stewart's ideological underpinnings:

There was a lively exchange last night on The Daily Show between Jon Stewart and CNBC's Jim Cramer, in which Stewart hammered Cramer and the network for being subservient to Wall Street and not alerting viewers to the coming meltdown. Cramer and the network can defend themselves, but what became clear to me is that Stewart really doesn't believe in the idea of a stock market where individuals can go to invest their money and build wealth over the long term. This, I think, is a revealing quote:

Isn't that part of the problem, selling this idea that you don't have to do anything? Anytime you sell people the idea that, sit back and you'll get 10 to 20 percent on your money, don't you always know that that's going to be a lie ...
So what is Stewart suggesting, that we "workers" just save insane gobs of money that we squirrel away into low-yielding savings accounts and rely on those savings and Social Security for our retirement? Even plenty of Democrats believe that, which is why many are pushing universal savings accounts. Now, of course, investors tend to be more conservative than folks without investment portfolios. So maybe that is what really bugs the liberal Stewart, as well as those Dems who want to get rid of 401(k) plans.
More at the link.

Megan McArdle's worth a read too: "Ultimately, I find Stewart disturbing because in some sense he's doing exactly what Cramer is - making powerful statements, and then when he gets called on him, retreating into the claim that well, you can't really expect him to act as if he were being taken seriously."

*Obligatory posts made famous by Allahpundit at Hot Air.

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